Code Talker The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII

time, my favorite, when corn was harvested. At the end of a long day, Father often made a kind of basket of barbed wire, filled it with corn, and roasted it over the fire. Lying on that cot at Fort Defiance, I almost tasted the sweetness of the yellow kernels. When I concentrated, I heard the soft chime of sheep bells. After the long winter, in early spring, they returned the sheep to Grandma’s shelter and corralled them to be sheared. It was then that their wool was the fullest, and as the weather warmed, the sheep wouldn’t need a thick coat. We tied the sheep so they wouldn’t move and get cut, then used manual shears, starting at the shoulders, and tried to get the wool off all in one piece. Grandma and my aunties then pulled any twigs and debris from the wool and sprinkled it with white clay sand. They let it dry for at least a week, because it contained oils that would make it difficult to work with. Next they carded the wool, using two flat paddles with metal spikes. These were worked against each other, kind of like combs, and the wool was pulled so the fibers all ran in one direction. That was hard physical labor. Next the carded wool was spun into yarn using a spindle, which is a wooden stick with a flat disk near the bottom. The spindle was twirled in one hand, and the carded wool was fed onto the spindle with the other hand. The fibers stuck together, making yarn. The disk at the bottom kept the winding wool from falling off the spindle. Washing with yucca suds came next, then drying, then dyeing. With dyes made from plants, the wool had to be dipped many times to get a good color. With commercial colors, which were available from the trading post, one application was enough. Some wool was dyed red, some black, some brown. Combining those colors with undyed white wool, the women designed and wove rugs with wonderful patterns. The looms were made from four sticks, two vertical and two horizontal. The coarsest wool was used to make the vertical strands for the rug or blanket, and finer wool was used to make the design. They used a big wooden comb to pack the horizontal wool down, giving the end product a tight weave. Auntie and Grandma kept busy with the task all winter. Great-Grandmother had been an especially fine weaver. The trading post owner judged the quality of the rugs with an expert eye. He traded goods the family needed, like coffee, flour, or salt, for rugs. He trusted his customers, and gave products on credit, keeping a ledger of what was owed. When my family didn’t need any products from the trader immediately, he exchanged woven goods for aluminum coins, or “chips,” in twenty-five-cent, fifty-cent, and dollar

denominations. These were stamped with the name of the trading post. My family used the post “money” when they needed it—for rope or sugar, candy or saltines, or dozens of other things the trader sold. Under the cover, I pressed a cold foot against my leg for warmth. At home, I had warm clothes that Grandma and my aunties made for me. From big squares of sheepskin they made shoes, folding the fur on the inside and wrapping it around my feet, securing it with twine. My winter pants and shirt were also sheepskin. Wet sheepskin, beaten with rocks and rubbed with sticks, grew soft. Then, as with the water bag, animal grease applied to the leather side of the skin made it water-repellent. The cozy clothing had thick, warm wool on the inside. I shivered. I couldn’t wait for summer break.

CHAPTER FIVE Bullies and Religion Late 1920s, Early 1930s Rain streamed down the dormitory windows, showing no signs of letting up. The weather had warmed a bit, and plants had begun to grow, but we probably wouldn’t get to go outside all day. Pretending disinterest, I watched the two older boys who’d been called to the dorm to babysit. The matrons always left for the weekend. When it rained and we couldn’t go outside, we smaller boys were at the mercy of our older schoolmates. Despite the strict discipline at school, or perhaps because of it, many bullies had sprung up among the school population. The teachers and administration usually ignored them, apparently preferring to stay out of their way in a safe classroom or office. The taller of the two boys commanded, “Line up.” He gestured with two hands. “Both sides.” We scuttled to the sides of the room, our heads hunched into our shoulders. The empty middle of the room seemed huge. Tall Boy grinned at his friend. He tossed him a baseball, keeping one for himself. “Cross over,” he said quietly. We raced, protecting our heads with our arms. The very smallest cried as they stumbled across the room. Both big boys fired baseballs at us, cheering when they hit their targets. I dodged and aimed a stare, sharp as a blade of yucca, at one of the boys. I’d never been hit. I hated to see the smaller children cry, but I didn’t dare help them. We’d played this game before, and the bullies attacked anyone who tried to help. Someday, when I’m big, I’ll pay them back. I stood under the steady flow of the shower, the matron watching to be sure I got clean. Water puddled at my feet. I remembered carrying water by bucket at home

in Chichiltah. A waste. All this water. Standing under the warm flow, I yawned, although the five-thirty wake-up was no problem for me. At home I often got up earlier than that. While the matrons were waking any stragglers I’d made my bed. At home I slept on the ground. Life at school, if you only considered the amenities, was much softer than life on the Checkerboard. I soaped what was left of my hair and rinsed it, turning to glance at the frowning matron. She gestured for me to hurry. As I pulled on my uniform, I hoped there wouldn’t be a fight in the cafeteria that morning. The normal breakfast—oatmeal and prunes—wasn’t bad. But leaving the cafeteria . . . That was another story entirely. The older boy and girl sitting at the ends of the rectangular table-for-eight finished their oatmeal. Before they could reach for my bowl, I wolfed the remnants of my cereal and placed dish and spoon on the table. The three younger girls sitting across from me did the same. But one of the two boys on my side of the table didn’t finish soon enough. The big girl glanced to be sure the dining room attendants weren’t watching and grabbed his last prune. Although the older two were there to make sure we younger ones ate, they generally snatched anything they wanted from the smaller students’ plates. A male monitor at the side of the room gave a hand signal, and we put our utensils down and stood, leaving dishes and trays on the table. Another signal told us to exit the cafeteria. I, along with the other boys my age, lined up quickly at the boys’ door. But not quickly enough. The eleven- to eighteen-year-old boys were already there, and the eleven- to eighteen-year-old girls were at the girls’ door. They’d all smuggled out dishes and leftover oatmeal, flinging them at one another as they exited. Soon we smaller kids became targets, with dishes, utensils, and coffeepots flying through the air. We ducked while matrons and administrators ran into the kitchen, leaving us on our own. Bullies barged into the bakery and stole bread, but the cooks didn’t dare intervene. Later that day, at lunchtime, I lined up single file with the other kids. As we approached the cafeteria, older boys whispered to us behind their hands. “There’s meat today. And bread. Make a sandwich and bring it to me.” “Hey!” It was Coolidge, my older brother. He shook his fist at the bullies. “Leave my brother alone.” I smiled and ducked into my place at the table. I ate the mutton and bread that day, leaving none. Normally lunch was pinto beans cooked with a little bacon, so mutton was a real treat.

Coolidge wasn’t always there to intervene, however, and I knew that next time I might leave the cafeteria hungry, hiding a sandwich in the kangaroo pocket of my uniform and handing it over to some bigger boy. Marching back to the dormitory in single file, I was careful to stay right behind the boy in front of me. No straggling allowed. From the dorm, we were called to afternoon classes. I waited while the fourth, third, second, and first graders lined up and marched to class. Finally it was my turn—kindergarten. Both Dora and I had done kindergarten at Tohatchi, but we’d been told that we had to repeat it there at Fort Defiance. In class I dove immediately into my assigned seat. No one spoke except the teacher. “Sit up straight, arms crossed in front of you,” she said, demonstrating the proper posture. That was usually the way we were told to sit, and everyone in class complied. I glanced over at the kids on the other side of the room. They sat stiff as statues, all trying not to move. Questions began. The teacher wrote YES and NO on the board, instructing the students to choose one or the other for each answer. Picture books and pictures taped to the walls helped in the learning process. We children listened, desperately trying to pull some meaning from what the teacher said. I clamped my lips together. As on other days, I volunteered no answers. Anyone who answered incorrectly was punished. It was safer not to volunteer, not to stand out. But the teacher called on me. “Yes,” I said, feeling sure that was the correct response. Her eyes squeezed into slits, and she slapped a ruler against her palm. “Chester Nez, the correct answer is ‘no.’ Come up here.” Head hanging, I walked slowly to the front of the class. While the other students sat silent the teacher whacked me across the shoulders with the ruler. It doesn’t hurt that much, I told myself, squeezing my eyes closed. But I knew it was wrong, trying to humiliate a person in front of his peers. Father would never do such a thing. The other students sat unmoving, knowing their turn at punishment would come soon enough. “Go back to your seat, and pay attention,” the teacher said. None of the teachers spoke Navajo, and paying attention to the meaningless English was not easy. We’d been warned not to speak to the other children during meals or in class, so we couldn’t help each other out with the teacher’s questions. Even during free time, in the dormitory or outdoors, English was the

only language allowed. Since almost none of the new students knew English, this was an impossible mandate. In class, if a child dared, he raised his hand for permission to go to the bathroom. Of course, he had to ask in English, so most tried to hold it until after class. We weren’t allowed to fidget or to look around at each other. Eyes stared straight ahead. Feet were planted firmly on the floor. Hands and heads remained motionless. But in order to avoid being hit, we had to learn. Eventually we students began to get the gist—if not the finer meaning—of what was said. And one thing became alarmingly clear: the school planned to erase everything we’d been taught at home. After the last class of the day, I was ready to vent some pent-up energy. We returned to the dormitory to play inside. We had no indoor toys, so we invented games or played things like hide-and-seek. Then we marched to a supper of rice or corned beef with cabbage grown on the school’s farmland. After eating and escaping the older kids at the cafeteria, we younger boys returned to our dorm. Bedtime was seven-thirty or eight o’clock. It was a glorious, sunny Saturday. I had made lots of friends my age at school. We all gathered in a group. After we tired of hide-and-seek, we meandered in a cluster to the trading post. It was down the sidewalk from the small kids’school, just outside the Fort Defiance grounds. We boys had a few coins from doing odd jobs. The same twostory building that housed the older children’s school also provided office space for a host of government workers. Coal furnaces heated the building. The other boys and I broke up coal and received ten cents per bucket. Government workers also hired students to chop wood, and when the plumbing broke, we were paid to haul quantities of water to the offices. At the trading post, Robert Walley and I bought marbles with money we’d earned hauling coal. Robert was one of my closest friends at Fort Defiance. Outside, one of the guys drew a circle in the dirt with a stick. We all shot marbles, trying to make them land inside the circle while hitting someone else’s marble out. After the game, our pockets bulged, and at night, kids crawled around under the dormitory beds looking for dropped marbles. After Dora and I completed our first year or two, the school began to send a

truck at the beginning of the school year to collect us kids from the Gallup area. We met the truck at the Two Wells Trading Post in Gallup, thirteen or fourteen miles from my home in Chichiltah. On those back-to-school days, Father loaded me, Dora, and any other local school-bound children into his horse-drawn wagon. Older brother Coolidge always returned to school early, so he wasn’t with us. Father brought cold food—roasted mutton or goat, fried bread, and tortillas. At the trading post he fed us, and any other children who arrived, while we waited for the Fort Defiance truck. When the truck arrived, we labored up into its bed, then turned back to watch the trading post and Father disappear in the distance. Tears washed tracks down dusty cheeks. We dreaded the long time away from our families, and those of us who were returning students felt a mounting anxiety. As each slow mile unwound, we drew closer to the hated discipline at school. To add insult to injury, before I grew older, the bigger boys who rode with us in the truck bed stole the big bags of food our parents had packed for Dora and me. My friend Robert Walley took matters into his own hands, deciding one winter that he’d had enough of school. He ran away with a couple other boys. They headed southeast, traveling through Arizona into New Mexico. I kept up with my studies, but I missed Robert. We usually studied together. And other boys had begun to join us. Our group of boys played together on weekends. Without runaway Robert, and several others in the gang who’d escaped with him, weekends dragged. I walked over to the trading post. The dimes and nickels in my pocket jiggled against each other. I liked having my own odd-job money. For a long while I stood in front of the candy display. It all looked good. Then—as usual—I chose red licorice. I selected a few marbles, paid for everything, and headed back to the dorm. That night I paid a dime for a movie, finding a seat between two friends who hadn’t run away with Robert. Some school movies were free, but the good ones cost ten cents. This one was a Tom Mix story. Pretty much all the movies were about cowboys defeating Indians. I liked Tom Mix. I also liked Buck Jones and Hopalong Cassidy, both popular movie choices at the school. After watching those movies, some of the little kids planned to be cowboys when they grew up. A month passed. No Robert. The boys in my age group were sitting at lunch when—despite the ban on talking—a buzz went around the cafeteria. Navajo police had captured the

runaways at their homes, returning them to Fort Defiance. Tired of studying by myself in my dorm room and spending weekends without my good friend, I felt relieved to hear the news. A hush blanketed the room. No clink of silverware. No sounds of chewing. I looked up from my beans. Robert and the other escapees filed into the cafeteria dressed as girls. They stood against one wall, their heads hanging, for what seemed like forever. Everyone stared. I sat like the others, mesmerized by the girls’ clothing. And when I went to get Robert that night to study, I was told that the runaways were not allowed to associate with the other students for a month. Robert hadn’t told me about his plans to run away. It was all very secretive. But I would not have joined them, anyway. I’d already seen too many kids humiliated after making a dash for freedom. And I didn’t want to leave Dora. I traipsed through the trees in the school yard, keeping an eye out for the right kind of stick. The day before, I’d shattered my old stick. There! The fallen branch was straight, with a curve at the end. That afternoon my friends—now ten years old—gathered at a vacant field to play hockey. I swung the new stick a few times, getting used to its balance. When twelve boys had arrived at the field, we chose up sides, two teams of six. We buried a ball in the dirt. Everyone raced in, using their sticks to unearth the buried ball. Each team fought to hit the ball into its opponents’ net to earn a goal. After about an hour of play, a younger boy ran up. “The football pants are here!” he said. Everyone abandoned the game and ran down to the classroom that was used as a locker room. Sure enough, a few new football pants lay spread out on a desk. There was never enough money for full uniforms, so we wore the pants with T-shirts. Most of the boys at school loved football. We made our own cleats, fastening a kind of tack to the bottom of our everyday shoes. Our helmets, made from a canvaslike material, tied under our chins. The flat devices offered very little protection and were nicknamed “fried bread” helmets. If we got lucky, we made it to the locker room before a game in time to get a set of upper-body protective pads. There weren’t enough pads to go around, and we often played pickup games of football without protection.

“Too bad we can’t just take them back to the dorm with us,” Robert said, looking at the new pants. But rules had to be obeyed, and the first boys to get to the locker room before a game got the gear. It was a Thursday. Cold. The two-and-a-half-mile trek to church was going to be chilly. And the weather was supposed to get worse. It would be colder by Sunday, when we’d again take that same walk. Church. Thursday and Sunday. Without fail. Another Robert, Robert Adams, and I arrived at church early and changed into altar-boy vestments. It was my fourth year as an altar boy. I could dress in the vestments, reciting the correct prayers with each item of clothing, in my sleep. “Do you think there’s a connection?” I asked. Robert raised both eyebrows. “What do you mean?” “Between Catholic and Navajo.” Robert adjusted the neck of his flowing surplice. “Do you?” “Holy water and corn pollen. Kind of the same idea,” I said. Robert’s forehead furrowed. “I guess.” “Even the sign of the cross—forehead, chest, each shoulder. That’s kind of like a blessing with corn pollen.” “Kind of.” My friend did not look convinced. “And what about our creation, speaking the Navajo word for ‘light,’ and then the sun appeared. In the Bible, God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and the sun appeared. Same thing.” A look of comprehension dawned on Robert’s face, and he smiled at me. “I think you’ve got something, there.” The government school at Fort Defiance believed we students should all be Christian, specifically Catholic. I’ve always loved to sing. I sang in the Catholic church choir for three years while attending boarding school. I served as an altar boy for four years. Boarding school taught me about Christmas, the birth of Jesus. On the big day, each student received a bag of candy and fruit in celebration. And Fort Defiance erected a Christmas tree, a beautiful thing, covered with lights and ornaments. None of us had ever seen one before attending school. The priests and nuns taught us about Catholicism: the Trinity, saints, and

sacraments. The new religion presented new ideas, differing in disquieting ways from the religion we had learned at home. The Navajo Right Way stressed the importance of a life in balance, a respect for all things as part of nature, even rocks and blades of grass. The Catholic Church stood in awe of God’s creation of the world, but did not feel the same kinship with nature that we Navajo children had been taught. The new religious teachings caused many of us to question where we really belonged—in the white man’s church or on the reservation with our own sacred beliefs. Torn between two cultures, we were unable to fully embrace either one. We didn’t know where we fit. Navajo ceremonies were seen by the nuns and priests as pagan, and the Navajo Holy People were looked down upon. The white clerics had no misgivings about voicing their disdain for the cultural heritage we had brought from home. The new teachings caused confusion. We students were taught only the white man’s way at school and only the Navajo way at home. And each culture saw the other as wrong.

CHAPTER SIX Building Grandmother’s Hogan Early 1930s Father led our horse, the odd-looking, stripped-down wagon frame bumping along behind. I trotted beside him. “Look!” I pulled at Father’s sleeve and pointed at a tall, straight piñon with my thumb. “That one. Look how straight.” He nodded. “A good one.” I felt good being out with the men and not, for once, facing the disapproval of Auntie. Father and Uncle lifted the long two-handled saw from the wagon frame. They lined up on either side of the tree. “Move away from the trunk,” Father warned me. Uncle gripped one end of the saw and Father the other. Within five minutes, the twelve-foot tree crashed to the ground. I helped remove the small branches with an ax, and they lashed the long log to the wagon frame. Father had removed the wagon box that morning, so the logs for Grandma’s hogan could be carried on the frame. “Three,” said Uncle. “That’s enough for this trip.” We turned the horse toward the building site. After unloading the three logs, we headed out in search of more. I could sense Grandma’s pleasure. A hogan was a real home. Grandfather and Grandmother had lived in a rough shelter made from tree branches and logs since before I was born. They stayed in that shelter through all seasons, not moving from pasture to pasture with the sheep and the younger family members. Their home was cold in winter, hot in summer, but Grandmother did not complain. No one had life easy on the Checkerboard. Nevertheless, Grandfather, Father, and Uncle had decided it was time for Grandma to have a permanent home, a hogan. She chose the site for the traditional one-room dwelling, a slight rise, backed up to the western side of the box canyon where we lived. The project carried an energy with it that made me hum while we worked.

Logs, cut in uniform lengths, would form the eight sides of the hogan. No windows. “The straight sides will each be the length of a log and will come about this high.” Father held his arm out at shoulder level. “Then we will cut the logs shorter and shorter so they step in, making a rounded roof.” I nodded. Of course I had seen hogans before. Lots of them. They made a round, solid shape on the landscape. We labored for several days. Each log had to be notched so it would fit and hold tightly to adjacent logs. At the center of the roof dome, a hole was left open for smoke. This was the only opening in the new dwelling, other than the door. I dug dirt to fill the chinks between logs and to keep out the cold in winter, heat in summer. More dirt, shoveled onto the roof, provided additional insulation. The doorway, as always, faced east. Wooden hunting bows were hung over the door on the inside and the outside for protection. When everything else was finished, Grandmother hung a blanket—one of traditional design, that she had woven herself—to cover the door opening. Before Grandma and Grandpa entered the hogan, they sent someone to fetch a medicine man from his home. The family watched as he performed a traditional blessing. I noticed that Father, who had trained for a while as a medicine man before Mother’s death, watched with an intent, serious expression. The man entered the door and moved clockwise around the dwelling, blessing each of the four directions with corn pollen. Then he stepped outside, walking clockwise from the east to the south, west, then north. At each compass point, he again blessed the hogan. Last, he blessed the door. Life in the new dwelling was now ready to start—in harmony and balance, the Right Way. Grandma continued to bless her snug home before sunrise each morning. I watched her many times as she walked outside, took a few pinches of corn pollen from a pouch, and made her blessing to the east, south, west, and north, always moving clockwise. The four directions were very important in Navajo belief. East (ha’a’aah) was where life began, the sunrise. South (shádi’ááh) was where you got warmth. West (e’e’aah) had to do with the way you spent your day, what was ahead and behind, also where the sun was carried away at sunset. North (náhokos) was where everything was put to rest. The pollen used in Grandma’s blessing was collected at harvesttime, in September. The women in my family harvested the corn and saved the pollen. They shook the corn tassels into a pan or used a rag to remove the pollen. Then

they sorted out any impurities—like corn silk. The pure pollen was stored in a jar or a flour sack and, usually, blessed by a medicine man. Medicine men went from house to house in the summer, blessing corn pollen. Only blessed pollen could be used in a medicine bag. Most families had lots of pollen on hand, but several times I saw Grandma use ash when she ran out. She put a pinch on her shoes, not her tongue. Then she made the blessing. Ash helped Dora and me when we couldn’t sleep. It got rid of nightmares. Grandma put ashes from the fire on our arms or our forehead. In the new hogan, Grandma’s cook fire, built right on the dirt floor in the center of the room, was no longer threatened by wind or rain. Eventually, Father hauled a large oil can, with no bottom, from the trading post. The can had a fireplacelike opening. It did double duty as stove and fireplace, sitting in the middle of the hogan. In its lid was a hole, into which Grandpa inserted a pipe. The metal pipe stuck up through the roof, letting smoke exit the room. Once the hogan was built, I savored the days like today, when the sheep grazed close to home, and we returned at night for dinner. Eating with Grandmother and Grandfather was much better than cooking meager fare over a campfire. As I approached the hogan, I was hit by the full, rich aroma of roasting mutton, Grandma’s home-cooked meal. When I entered, a litter of prairie dogs slept curled up inside, near the cook fire. It was a cool day, topping out somewhere around seventy. Not like the ninety-plus-degree days we’d often endured in summer. I picked up a prairie dog, stroking its soft back. The little “dog” burrowed against my chest. I offered it some goat’s milk, which had been strained through a flour bag and boiled for human consumption. It sucked it from my finger, eating hungrily. I put the little rodent down and stepped outside. The prairie dog followed, standing with his front paws up, like a little man. When I went back inside, the prairie dog barked bravely at the outside world. Then a real dog barked somewhere off in the distance, and it scampered back inside. I helped Grandma spread flour sacks that had been ripped open and sewn together in a circular shape. They made a table on the dirt floor. The mutton sizzled over the fire, fat spitting onto the open flames. I could hardly wait to wrap it up in a tortilla and eat it like a sandwich. When it was finally time for dinner, everyone sat on the dirt floor, with the bowls of food placed on the flour sacks. I looked around at my family, raising my brows at my sister, Dora. She smiled and nodded at me. Everything about the

hogan felt luxurious after the makeshift shelters on the trail. There were no books, no electricity, and no plumbing, but we were snug and secure. I reached for a tortilla and rolled some mutton inside. Oil lamps cast wavering shadows across the single room. Outside, the relaxed nasal bleat of a lamb and the higher cry of a goat let us know that all was well. A puppy’s bark, a litter from one of the sheepdogs, rose above the soft whisper of wind in the evergreens. And inside, the almost magical fragrance of burning juniper lulled the family after a hearty meal. I asked Grandma, “Will you tell us a story?” A cricket chirped just outside. Grandma looked up at the ceiling, then down at the empty dishes sitting on her burlap table. She turned her gaze to me. “When I was only a girl . . .” Grandma told us about her childhood. My eyes drifted closed. It had been a long day. In less than a month, school would resume for me, Coolidge, and Dora. I wished that I could stay home and spend the winter with my family. As I drifted to sleep, I pictured snow, deep around the hogan. When I was very young, sometimes my brothers and I stripped naked in the snow, and Father rolled us in a snowbank. This Navajo tradition toughened us children against winter cold. Afterward, we rushed to sit by the fire and warm up. The laughter of my brothers still chimes in my head. I woke when it was still dark, the remnants of a dream tugging me back toward sleep. With my eyes closed, I reconstructed the dream. It was autumn. Neighbors, aunts, uncles, and cousins had come to stay for several days, maybe even a week or two, bringing blankets and food—fresh and dried meat and canned goods. There would be feasting and storytelling around the fire. I loved spending days with the sheep and goats, but I also looked forward to the social gatherings. There, stories I knew and loved were told for the hundredth time. With everyone squatting around a big fire outdoors, tales of current events were spun, things like new hogans being built, or animals being sold or traded. We children listened as adults traded stories about weather and crops. The Diné had no electricity and no radios. News was spread at these gatherings—things like births and deaths, the price of wool, the amount being offered at trading posts for our Navajo-design blankets and rugs. It was exciting just to think about it. But I would be back in school by then. A feeling of dread lodged in my stomach. I wouldn’t be there when winter came, when the range of the sheep would be limited and they’d stay in the big box canyon surrounding Grandma’s

home. I wouldn’t be there when Father boiled the unhusked corn to feed the animals, and sometimes the Diné, too. When snow covered the grass, the livestock would also eat juniper and piñon branches. Along the road to Chichiltah, the trees were bare up as high as the sheep and goats could reach. And herders cut branches for their livestock when the animals couldn’t reach them on their own. I turned over, thinking about how snug Grandma’s hogan felt. I liked that it backed up to the west side of the canyon, only a hundred yards or so from the steep red rock cliffs that formed the canyon’s rim. The cliffs provided the back wall for a sheep corral and also gave shelter to Grandma’s home. They helped protect animals and people from frigid winter winds.

CHAPTER SEVEN Sweat Lodge Early 1930s I bathed in the arroyo, where a spring bubbled up to the surface of Grandma’s land. The new hogan had no indoor plumbing, and in hot, early September a bucket, used to rinse my hair, made the arroyo into an outdoor tub. The cool water refreshed and relaxed me in the dry summer heat. I lay back and closed my eyes, letting the sun dry my chest. Better than the arroyo bath was the cleansing Coolidge, Father, Grandfather, Uncle, and I performed a few days later—a cleansing of both body and spirit— the sweat bath. Grandma, Auntie, and the younger girls stayed at home. Back then, only males entered the sweat hut. A first sweat bath was a kind of coming-of-age ceremony for a young boy. I think I first went into the sweat hut when I was five. My dad taught me the prayers that must be said and told me where to sit. We prayed not only for ourselves, but for our tribe. Coolidge, the three men, and I hiked toward the quiet place where the hut stood. The location had been carefully selected. Disturbance there was unlikely. As we crested a small hill, I glimpsed the compact lodge, built into a wide, flat hole. Years ago, my relatives had dug that foot-deep hole into the cement-hard desert earth. As a result, the structure sat slightly below ground level. Entering it was like entering into the earth’s womb. Poles, their forks joining together at the top like strong fingers, fanned out from a central point in the sweat lodge. This created a round structure that was similar, at first glance, to a hogan. But the sweat hut had no horizontal logs and there was a peak rather than a hole at the center of the roof. The solid roof was needed to hold the heat in. Small branches filled the wide gaps between supports at the bottom of the lodge, and dirt shoveled over the wooden poles provided insulation and strength. Heavy blankets and rugs were piled over the dirt on the outside of the lodge.

That morning, I had helped collect the finest sand from the riverbed, carrying it to the lodge and placing it outside the door. Now Father, Uncle, and Grandfather built a fire outside the lodge. They searched for rocks, especially dark volcanic rocks, and threw them into the fire to heat. Coolidge and I then carried the hot rocks into the sweat hut, balancing them on the fork of a stick. We piled them inside, to the left of the entrance, in a shallow depression, approximately four inches deep. We and the men then entered the lodge on hands and knees, an act of humility. A special prayer was recited upon entering. We wore just a breechclout. When the entrance blanket lowered, sudden darkness filled the room. I couldn’t see the others inside the shelter. Grandfather poured water mixed with sage and juniper over the rocks, and billows of steam rose in the dark lodge—entering deep into our lungs. 18 Aromas of juniper and sagebrush filled the small room, the sage smelling much like Vicks VapoRub and having the same effect. Nasal passages opened, and congestion cleared. Father had made medicines from the two plants. Each of us drank some. We smeared the rest on our bodies to discourage things like arthritis or swelling. I sat at the back with my brother. Hot steam made me groggy, and I wondered how the adult males stood it, sitting so near the steaming rocks. The three men and we two boys filled the compact, heated space. The men sang traditional songs, celebrating our relationship to the four compass directions. Coolidge and I joined in on the songs we knew, but on many we just listened to the men. Heat grew more intense, like a fever, melting away energy and any thought of the outside world. Sweat streamed down my forehead, stinging my eyes. Coolidge and I knew we couldn’t leave until the adults had finished singing. Only then would the ceremony complete its work, uniting us with the physical world so that nature became a part of our hearts, bodies, and systems. This assured that impurities left us and that we were taken care of from sunrise to sunset and through the nights to come. After an hour, we emerged, saying an exit prayer. I squinted in the bright sunlight, and late-summer air cooled my body. Standing on a blanket, I splashed sand carried from the riverbed over myself. The sand, fine as powder, didn’t stick, but it removed the sweat. No towel was needed. I felt good. Lighter. A sweat bath was not to be taken heedlessly, and I had prepared carefully, examining my life both at school and at home. I knew I’d entered into the sweat hut with the proper attitude. So I felt sure that the

ceremony had provided me with what I sought—protection, strength against bad influences, and a cleansing of the soul. Many products of the earth were utilized in the bath. Sand, rock, fire, air, water, and wood all went into the building of the sweat lodge or the ceremony itself. We, as participants, created a connection to the earth by utilizing its products. The four principal elements—earth, water, fire, and air—were an honored part of the sweat hut ceremony. Like all Navajo ceremonies, participants had their own individual reasons for taking part. The benefit gained depended upon the seriousness of the individual partaking in the ritual. Bad thoughts could spoil everything. Only those who threw their hearts and minds into the ceremony, invoking the Right Way, received the fullest blessing. When I did that, the sweat bath cleaned my soul and everything else in my day-to-day life.

CHAPTER EIGHT The Great Livestock Massacre Mid-1930s The summer day at Chichiltah sizzled with heat and expectations. Father and Grandma counted the days and months of summer, making sure they knew when my school resumed in the fall. Hot days filled with freedom raced by, and that back-to-school date would come too soon. But right now I was free again—of teachers, of that heavy feeling that I was about to answer a question incorrectly, and of volatile matrons. I rattled the fence I’d just mended to test its strength. Good. It formed part of the family sheep corral. I stretched and sipped from a canvas jug of water. The far-off rumble of heavy equipment, a sound not often heard in Navajo country, gave me warning. If I had known what was coming, my heart wouldn’t have pounded with eager anticipation. But the sound, and then the sight of a flatbed truck carrying a huge bulldozer, was uncommon—and intriguing. I wiped the sweat from my eyes. What could it be for? Then in my thirteenth or fourteenth summer, I didn’t connect the heavy equipment with any kind of problem. I raced down to the dirt road to watch. Navajo men dismounted from the flatbed. They worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, government employees, they said. With a good deal of sarcasm, reservation Navajos called government workers “Washing-done.” Grandmother and Grandfather looked at each other, numb expressions frozen on their faces. The men drove the heavy-duty bulldozer off the flatbed, down a hastily placed ramp. My family and I watched. The big machine lumbered across Grandma’s property, raising clouds of dust. It stopped not far from the hogan. We heard scraping sounds as a huge trench was dug. When the trench was complete— about 150 feet long and four or five feet deep—the men and machine moved to a plot of land inhabited by another family and dug another long hole in the ground. They dug three or four trenches, each on property owned by different neighbors.

Were they preparing for some new ceremony? The workers left with no explanation. I imagined a huge sing with multiple bonfires. But my adult relatives were strangely quiet. A week or so later, the BIA men returned on horseback. My family gathered at the hogan. The BIA workers blocked one end of the trench on Grandma’s land, leaving the other end open. “You need to round up your sheep and goats,” one man said. “Herd them into the trench.” Grandfather’s face had turned to stone. “But—” “Do not protest, Grandfather,” one of the BIA workers said, using the polite form of address for a younger man addressing an elder. “Haven’t you heard, you’ll get thrown in jail?” My stomach knotted as I helped herd all but three hundred of Grandmother’s sheep and goats into the deep trench. The willing, domesticated animals moved readily into the trench through the open end. Then the BIA workers sealed that end. A flammable material was sprayed on the animals, and they were set on fire. We couldn’t believe what we were witnessing. I covered my ears, but could not block the shrieks of the animals, especially the goats, who had a high, piercing cry. The stench of burning wool and flesh filled the normally fresh air. That night, as I lay sleepless, the screams echoed in my head. Across the hogan, Grandmother and Grandfather cried softly. Through years of hard work Grandma’s herd had grown to around a thousand animals, mostly sheep, with a scattering of goats. The entire family had worked hard to build up our herd, and we were happy and grateful for our healthy animals. In Navajo country, sheep were a measure of wealth. So, despite the Depression afflicting the rest of the nation, my family had worked their way to success. I knew that Dora and I had helped. With the herd reduced by seven hundred head, all those years of labor came to nothing. I lay in the dark, tears sliding down my cheeks. Many of the animals had been pets, greeting their humans with bleats and head butts. I missed them. And Dora missed them. Those animals deserved respect, not such a terrible death at the hands of cruel men. Finally, exhausted from the terrible day, I fell into a deep sleep. I woke up feeling groggy, but knowing that something was wrong. Then the stench of burned livestock filled my nostrils. I dressed and went outside. Auntie was already up, working. Together my family performed the tasks necessary to

care for our remaining animals. We moved like machines, unable to process what had happened. Late that night, I again heard Grandmother’s and Grandfather’s stifled sobs. I overheard their whispered words to each other. They could not imagine how they would make up for their loss. Father, working at the trading post, learned that families all over the reservation and the Checkerboard were devastated by the massacre of their livestock. Any family with more than a hundred head of sheep and goats was subject to the “reduction.” The number of animals killed varied on a sliding scale, depending on how big each herd was. Horses and cattle were also killed, but their deaths were more humane. They were shot rather than burned. The shocked families warned one another not to protest. There were rumors of arrests. A historical perspective on the politics of this disaster doesn’t soften the blow still felt by the families who were deprived of their livelihood. The program may have been well intentioned, but like many other political decisions, the results proved disastrous. It was during the Great Depression, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in 1932, was president. His legislative agenda, the “New Deal,” initiated many programs and public-works projects designed to help employ the needy. The disastrous livestock reduction might never have occurred if four things had not come together. First, reservation and Checkerboard land, aggressively grazed by livestock, was less productive than it had been. Sheep were the primary animals raised, and they graze close to the ground, often killing the roots of plants. The dust bowl in the southwestern Great Plains had created a more serious problem than the problems on Navajo land, but still, overgrazing was then under the microscope of public awareness. As John Collier wrote: “The Navajo reservation is being washed into the Boulder Dam reservoir.” 19 This government project, begun in 1931, is now known as the famous Hoover Dam. Second, the overgrazing coincided with a federal New Deal push for a huge park to be created on Navajo land. The proposal, first made in 1931 by Roger Toll, died, but was renewed when Roosevelt was elected. People argued that the park would create jobs, but it would also absorb land needed for grazing Navajo

livestock. The National Park Service decided that the Navajos could continue to live on the parkland, but they would have to retain their “quaint” ways of life, continuing to raise sheep and implementing no improvements. This would do nothing to relieve the already overgrazed conditions. It was driven home to officials that fewer animals would mean fewer demands for grass. 20 Third, John Collier, the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, felt pressured to do something to rehabilitate Navajo grazing lands. He opposed the Navajo National Park, but proposed a stock reduction program as the solution to the overgrazing problem. And fourth, Collier also promised to expand the land area of the reservation in return for the reduction in livestock. He wanted to incorporate lands already used by the Navajo for grazing, making their stewardship official. This would include at least some of the Checkerboard Area. The idea seems somewhat contradictory, since with more land, more animals could be supported, but the land was, by then, so poor that Collier felt a livestock reduction would still be in order. As planned, Collier’s recommendation for reservation expansion lessened the vehemence of Navajo objections to his proposed stock reduction. The stock reduction proposal passed. The Bureau of Indian Affairs jumped in, employing Navajos to execute the reduction mandate. In an attempt to make up for the diminished income from their liquidated livestock, the government also promised the Navajos an education that would lead to jobs with various New Deal public-works programs. But then John Collier proposed the “Indian Reorganization Act,” a proclamation of “cultural freedom” for Indians which basically proposed to make the various tribes into corporations administered by the United States government 21. The act was passed by the Pueblos but rejected by the Navajos. Still, Congress passed the act in 1934, leaving the future of the Navajos poorly defined in the eyes of the government. Once the livestock massacre was completed, with the Navajo sheep population having been reduced from a high of 1.6 million in 1932 to only 400,000 in 1944, 22 the promised geographical expansion failed to take place, although, to his credit, John Collier did fight to obtain more land for the reservation. 23 The proposed national park was also defeated, a small blessing for those who kept sheep and other livestock. Only a few Navajos were given public-works employment. And the education program that was promised—

preparing more Native Americans to work on the numerous public-works projects—did not materialize for the members of the Navajo tribe, the tribe that had rejected John Collier’s Indian Reorganization Act. It was odd that in Depression times, the mutton of the slaughtered animals was not preserved as food. Nor were the wool and leather utilized. A small portion of the meat was canned for later use, although the meat from Grandma’s herd and neighboring herds was simply destroyed. Three or four years later, some canned mutton was distributed to chapter houses on the Checkerboard and the reservation. Some Navajo families were paid a pittance for their destroyed livestock, less than three dollars per head of sheep, when the market value vacillated between eight dollars and fourteen dollars per head. Other families were never paid. I am not sure whether my family received any money for their dead animals. There are historians who suggest that the government’s stock reduction program was aimed at making the Navajos less independent and more dependent upon the “generosity” of the government in Washington, D.C. I don’t know about that, but I do know that for us Navajos, the government’s “livestock reduction” program ended in failure. Historians name John Collier, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945, as the instigator of the massacre. But I remember another man, E. Reeseman Fryer, who, during the New Deal, worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the superintendant of the Navajo Reservation under John Collier. He served from 1936 until 1942, and was personally responsible for implementing much of the livestock reduction program. This man was especially resented. He was a white man, enjoying a position of power over the Navajo tribe. The popular belief was that what Fryer fried was the Navajos. The extermination went on for some six years, with different sections of Navajo land targeted at different intervals. By the time it stopped, the rain had stopped as well, and the grass continued to dry up. The effect on the Navajo sense of community was devastating. In the time before the massacre, friends and neighbors helped one another. When someone fell sick, neighbors pitched in to care for their animals. Medicine men and women were summoned to cure both people and animals. Neighbors and family assisted by gathering together at night and praying for the sick to recover. The livestock reduction challenged this sense of community by pitting Navajo against Navajo. Those who kept livestock resented the Navajo exterminators who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Neighbors put up fences to enclose

their pastures, saving them for the sheep that they had left. The year-round migration from one community grazing area to another that had always been the norm as I grew up became impossible. As a result, ties between neighbors weakened. The toll in self-respect was also huge. Families, unable to protect their own livestock, felt powerless. And nothing could have done more to erode the local work ethic. What was the point of working hard to build up wealth, a sizable herd, when the government just stepped in and destroyed it? The massacre killed more than livestock. It changed the dynamic between neighbors; it changed the meaning of hard work; it changed everything. After the Long Walk, the livestock massacre is considered the second great tragedy in Navajo history. A story now woven into oral tradition, the extermination is discussed wherever Navajos meet, so that like the Long Walk, it will never fade from memory. Hot, dry summer days passed while I herded the remaining sheep, helped with repairs, chopped wood, and generally made myself useful at home. Occasionally adult relatives asked me to translate Navajo to English for them at the trading post. I always liked to help. Translating was interesting, and they paid me with a stick of licorice or peppermint candy. But just as good as the candy was the respect I got for my knowledge. School was paying off. I hadn’t talked during my summer days at home about the fighting at school or about how mean the matrons and teachers could be. I just wanted to enjoy being back in Chichiltah with my family. They looked at me with pride and treated me like someone special. Even so, at the end of each summer I lay awake considering whether I should go back to Fort Defiance. It was so much nicer at home, despite the lack of amenities like hot running water and electricity. Those comforts were nothing compared to being treated well. And at home, I knew exactly what was expected of me, so life, though physically challenging, was stress-free. At school, it was difficult to know what the teachers and matrons wanted. Still, in the end, I always returned. Even after some years, when Dora fell ill with tuberculosis and spent most of her time in the Fort Defiance sanitarium, I went to class. A couple of years after Dora got sick, my brother Coolidge finished school. Dora, though she recovered from the tuberculosis, was kept at home. So I returned to Fort Defiance alone. I forced myself to go, pushing the

dread I felt to the back of my mind. I wanted to make my family proud.

CHAPTER NINE Marine Recruit Late 1930s, Early 1940s As the truck navigated rutted paths, heading home toward Chichiltah, a tremendous weight lifted from my shoulders. No more matrons. I was the last of the Nez children to graduate from Fort Defiance. While I was a student there, the school had expanded its program to include seventh and eighth grades. But I’d finally completed the two additional years. Four years of school still loomed ahead. On my first day at public junior high school, in Gallup, New Mexico, I could hardly believe my ears. Navajo. Spoken in the hallways. Navajo! The classes were conducted in English. But there were lots of fellow Navajos, and when I stepped from the classroom to the hall, I spoke to a few, sometimes in English, sometimes in Navajo. No one hit me across the shoulders with a ruler. I felt liberated! From the first day, I noticed that the structure of this school differed drastically from Fort Defiance. At Fort Defiance there had been no letter grades. And English dominated the curriculum there, with the intent—I was now aware —of weakening our ties to Navajo culture, binding us to the white culture instead. Here, at Gallup, there were many subjects. I had to study hard to catch up, but I liked the Gallup school. No matrons watched my every move. No tiny children cried in their beds at night, terrorized by the administration and the older students. Chichiltah, although much closer to Gallup than to Fort Defiance, was still too far for a daily commute. So, while attending school in Gallup, I lived nearby at Fort Wingate. The fort boasted a football field and a complex of dormitories. The land, a soft blend of reds, tans, browns, and purples, felt like home. I shared an early-morning bus trip into Gallup each day with other Navajo students. I finished ninth grade and was partway through tenth when the government

again intervened. A Navajo boarding school in Tuba City, Arizona, was my next home. The school, founded by the Hopi Indians, was in desperate need of repair. The Hopis gave the deteriorating building to the Navajos. Tuba City was a land of sandstone and wind. I spent a couple of years there, and I never grew to like it. In addition to the school building being in bad repair, the food was awful. And there wasn’t much to do. We used to steal watermelons and peaches from local Hopi farmers. I made many friends. But even with friends I found myself bored. News broadcasts told of fighting in Europe, but the United States had not yet joined in the conflict that would eventually be known as World War II. In Window Rock, Arizona, however, the Navajo Tribal Council foresaw our country’s involvement. Rather than waiting for the American government to jump into the fray, in late spring of 1940 they passed a unanimous resolution: Whereas, the Navajo Tribal Council and the 50,000 people we represent, cannot fail to recognize the crisis now facing the world in the threat of foreign invasion and the destruction of the great liberties and benefits which we enjoy on the reservation, and Whereas, there exists no purer concentration of Americanism than among the First Americans, and Whereas, it has become common practice to attempt national destruction through the sowing of seeds of treachery among minority groups such as ours, and Whereas, we hereby serve notice that any un-American movement among our people will be resented and dealt with severely, and Now, Therefore, we resolve that the Navajo Indians stand ready as they did in 1918, to aid and defend our Government and its institutions against all subversive and armed conflict and pledge our loyalty to the system which recognizes minority rights and a way of life that has placed us among the great people of our race. It might surprise non-Navajos to read this declaration of allegiance. No Navajo, however, would be surprised. We have always felt a deep allegiance to our motherland, our Navajo Nation, and our families. To this allegiance is linked a sincere desire to protect all three. Even though I didn’t like Tuba City, if I hadn’t gone there, my whole life would have followed a different path. Something happened, something that would impact all of us, all across the country. Pearl Harbor transformed our

boredom. “The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor!” Word spread through the Tuba City dormitory like wildfire that Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. Soon, we all knew that Pearl Harbor was in Hawaii. Hawaii was thousands of miles away, and not yet a state, but it was also the home of a United States Naval base. The Japanese had been allies of the United States and Britain in World War I. They had captured a German base in Tsingtao, China, and after the war, they had prospered through expanding trade, becoming a recognized political and economic force in eastern Asia. But their triumph had been followed by the great earthquake of 1923, which destroyed half of Tokyo. Economic disasters followed, in the form of an overabundance of rice, which drove prices down, and tariffs imposed on Japanese manufactured exports by Western nations. Exacerbating this was the burgeoning population. By 1937, the island nation of Japan held, in its limited space, more than eighty million people. Japan’s resources were being depleted. The country needed to expand. Planning to gain natural resources, a market for their manufactured goods, and cheap labor, Japan invaded China near Beijing. After a three-month battle, the Japanese won Shanghai in November 1937. With the capital, Nanking, then threatened, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Republic of China, relocated to Wuhan. Japan captured the demoralized city of Nanking in December. Japaneseled massacres in the aftermath of the Nanking defeat killed as many as two to three hundred thousand Chinese people. America, shocked by the violence of the Japanese attack, refused to sell Japan items like scrap metal that could be used in waging war. In the summer of 1941, we nationalized all Japanese assets in the United States. Enraged, Japan signed a pact with Germany and Italy in September. The island nation, now aligned with the Axis powers against the United States, planned attacks on Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Midway, and the Philippines. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States could not ignore their enemy’s intent to take over the Pacific. We declared war against Japan the next day, December 8, 1941. Our school principal called us all together. He wanted to be sure that we all understood what was going on. He had researched Pearl Harbor, and he shared

what he had learned with us students, telling us about the Japanese, their aspirations to control an empire, and the damage they’d done to the United States Navy. My roommate, Roy Begay, and I discussed the momentous events. “What do you think this means?” asked Roy. “Our country has joined the war. I think the military will want us,” I told him. “We are warriors.” We, like other Native Americans, had been born to the warrior tradition. Like other Navajos, we saw ourselves as inseparable from the earth we lived upon. And as protectors of what is sacred, we were both eager to defend our land. April to June 1942 After gaining permission from the Navajo Tribal Council, Marine recruiters arrived in Tuba City only months after the Pearl Harbor attack, in April 1942. Full of curiosity and excitement, Roy and I listened to their presentation. The Marines showed enthusiasm and pride. They looked strong and capable in their dress-blue Marine uniforms. The recruiters announced that they wanted young Navajo men who spoke fluent English and fluent Navajo. The men were needed for a special project that would benefit their country. I glanced at Roy. He seemed riveted by the Marines’ words. I, too, was intrigued. Joining the Marines would mean leaving school, leaving the reservation and the lives we had always known, and entering foreign territory—the home of the white man. That was scary . . . and intriguing. Joining the Marines would affect the path we traveled for the rest of our lives. It might end our lives, if we were sent into battle. By that time the Japanese had conquered Hong Kong, Guam, and Wake Island. In a move reminiscent of their attack on Pearl Harbor, they had devastated the Australian port city of Darwin. And they had attacked the Philippines, causing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to remove General MacArthur from that archipelago. Both Roy and I knew that a decision made in haste could lead to dire consequences. We talked it over. I wanted to see how people lived off the reservation. I was curious to learn about the possibilities and opportunities offered out there in the larger world. And, more than anything, I wanted to serve and defend my country. That was a man’s responsibility. Roy felt the same way,

so he and I agreed to take the test offered by the Marines. Three of our friends at school in Tuba City agreed to be tested as well. We five young men accompanied Marine recruiters to Fort Defiance, Arizona, the place where I had attended boarding school. There, approximately two hundred more young Navajos, mostly from Window Rock, capital of the Navajo Nation, eagerly applied to become part of the Marines’special project. Marines require first-time recruits to be between the ages of seventeen and thirty-two. We men had no birth certificates, and several added a year or two to their ages in order to be accepted. At least one man, Carl Gorman, said he was younger than his actual age. He was thirty-five. The Marines talked to me, interviewing me in English about my family life and my education. I understood every word and responded accordingly, speaking carefully, using my best English. There were no interviews in Navajo. Apparently the Marines assumed we all spoke Navajo. Silently, I thanked the teachers at Fort Defiance for forcing me to learn English. And I thanked my family for keeping me fluent in Navajo. When all applicants had completed their interviews, Roy and I waited nervously. Would we make the cut? From the hundreds of applicants, only thirty were to be selected for the secret project. I wondered what it would be like to be a Marine. Would I make it through the tough physical training I’d heard about? I had been away from home a good part of my life in boarding school, so I knew I’d handle the separation from my family. But I’d have to leave Navajo country entirely, not just my home. I thought about mixing with white and black Marines, not just with other Navajos. Would I be able to compete with those men who had grown up off the reservation, in a different world, a different culture? Would I make my family proud? Word came. Roy and I made the cut. I congratulated Roy. His eyes glowed. Who could have guessed our schoolwork would pay off like this? At boarding school, we had grown accustomed to the constant tension and the need to avoid mistakes. Our ability to stay calm in the face of pressure, to think clearly under stress, had reaped rewards. We were Marines! It was the luckiest day of my life. I felt like I was walking in a dream. But what now? Two of the other three applicants from Tuba City were not selected for the project, but the third, Allen Dale June, joined Roy and me. Recruits from elsewhere in Arizona and New Mexico made up the rest of the group, which

came to be called “the original twenty-nine.” The project plan called for thirty men, and thirty were selected. However, one man dropped out. In all the excitement, I remember that incident only vaguely. I think it had something to do with the thirtieth man not being completely comfortable with the dialect of Navajo we used. In a combat situation, that could be deadly. Books on the code talkers have made other suppositions, one being that he was assigned special communications duty overseas while the rest of us attended basic training, and another that he was excused temporarily from attending basic training while he played high school football. At any rate, “the first (or original) thirty” became “the original twenty-nine,” a label that would stay with us for the rest of our lives. On May 4, 1942, we new recruits were taken by bus to Fort Wingate, New Mexico, the same place I had lived while attending junior high in Gallup. I had not yet told my family about enlisting in the Marines. They had no telephone, and there was no time to make the trip home to Chichiltah. At Fort Wingate, we ate lunch and were sworn in as United States Marines. Then we climbed into a bus bound for the Marine Recruit Depot just outside of San Diego, California. Most of our families didn’t know of their sons’ new military status. My heart pounded. I looked around the bus at my fellow recruits. I was a man now. We all were, even baby-faced Wilsie Bitsie. We were men who would fight for our country. “Make good use of your free time, men. Basic training starts tomorrow.” It was Sunday, and our superior officer left us twenty-nine men to our own devices. We were assigned bunks at the Marine Corps Recruitment Center in San Diego, the city that would soon house Camp Pendleton, home of the 1st Marine Division. We claimed beds, stowed our gear, and set off for downtown San Diego. A hodgepodge of new sights and sounds bombarded us. Most of us had never been outside the bounds of the four sacred mountains. The buildings in San Diego towered above us, their man-made peaks dwarfing nature. Trucks and cars roared along the endless network of streets. And the lights! It was like daylight, even at night. This was a far cry from Navajo land. We were seeing the world. The nature of our mission remained a mystery. Several men guessed we’d be assigned desk work. After all, the selection process had involved our skills with English and Navajo. Some thought we’d join the actual fight overseas, a chance to prove our courage.

Civil engineer Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary couple, grew up on the Navajo Reservation. He is credited with proposing the idea for the secret Navajo mission. He convinced Marine brass that the Navajo language—unwritten, and spoken by only those who had lived with us Navajos—could become the basis for an unbreakable code. Since the language was not written, it couldn’t be learned from a book. 24 It was estimated that only thirty non-Navajos spoke our language. Even that estimate was contested by many Diné, who believed that the language was so complex it could be learned only if one began in infancy. Johnston himself was a fine testimonial to this belief. Although he’d moved to the Navajo Reservation at the age of four with his parents, and although his playmates were all Navajo, he had learned the language only well enough to be considered a speaker of “trader” Navajo. He never became truly conversant with the deeper complexities of the language. Pronunciation of even one Navajo word is nearly impossible for someone not used to hearing the sounds that make up the language. During his first year of life, a baby grows accustomed to the auditory variations from which his native language is composed. As time goes on, children become less able to distinguish sounds from unfamiliar languages. Thus it is difficult for a non-Navajo speaker to hear Navajo words properly, and virtually impossible for him to reproduce those words. Native American languages, notably Choctaw and Comanche, had been used in a very limited way during World War I. In Europe, Native American fighting men were asked to transmit messages in their complex languages in order to stymie the enemy. This effort involved no code, but was an on-the-fly idea utilized only by several innovative commanders. After the war, the Germans discovered which native languages had been employed, and they sent “tourists,” “scholars,” and “anthropologists” to many tribes in the United States to learn their languages. Navajos were not among those tribes. That, too, worked in favor of using our Navajo language in developing a code. And we had another advantage. We had resisted adopting English words and folding them into our language. We made up our own words for new inventions, things like radios and telephones, keeping our language pure and free of outside influence. Despite the skepticism of some Marine officers, communications officer Major James E. Jones agreed to get the necessary equipment and to arrange a trial for Johnston’s idea. Major General Clayton B. Vogel, commander of the

Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, would observe the trial and rule on the potential of Philip Johnston’s proposal. Knowing that his Marines would be heavily involved in the fighting in the Pacific, Vogel had already initiated discussions with Commandant Thomas Holcomb about the need for secure communications in that arena of the war. Vogel was eager for fresh ideas involving unbreakable codes. In Los Angeles, a city where many Diné had moved seeking employment after the livestock massacre, Johnston found four men who spoke fluent English and Navajo. The men accompanied him to Camp Elliott, near San Diego. In February 1942, at Camp Elliott, the Navajo men were given an hour to come up with Navajo words representing several military terms for which there was no direct translation in Navajo. Then, with Major General Vogel and Major Jones as witnesses, the Navajos and the Marine communications men both transmitted several identical messages resembling in style and content the military messages that would be needed in battle. The standard “Shackle” code was written in English, encoded via a coding machine, and sent. Then the receiving end decoded the message, again via machine, and wrote it out in English. It took an hour to transmit and receive the test messages. When the same messages were transmitted and received in Navajo—with the men themselves acting as coding machines—it took only forty seconds for the information to be transmitted accurately. The Marines were convinced. Major General Vogel became a champion of the proposed code. He requested two hundred Navajo men for the pilot project. Due to some continuing doubts about the practicality of the project, he was granted only a trial number of men: thirty. The active recruitment of Navajos began. The military asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs for advice on recruiting men for this special project. The BIA felt that we Navajo Marines should be reserve specialists who didn’t have to go through basic training. The Marines didn’t much care for that suggestion. As members of their attack forces, they wanted us to prepare rigorously for battle and survival, just as other recruits would prepare. Then the BIA offered to provide two men as instructors and interpreters for the new Navajo recruits. The Marines decided that this recommendation made no sense, since the corps would provide us with instruction and the selection process required that we must all speak excellent English. After that, the Marines pretty much ignored the advice offered by the government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. They recruited the special-assignment Navajos as they recruited other men, except that they promised us a secret

mission. Like other new Marines, we would go through the necessary physical and mental rigors of basic training. The other Navajo recruits and I were not to be tasked with simply transmitting and receiving messages in our native language. The Japanese had cracked every code the United States had used thus far, and the Marines in charge of communications were skittish. What they needed, they decided, was a new code, one that used the Navajo language as a base. Our group of twenty-nine Navajo men had some serious work ahead of us. But we still had to complete basic training before we learned about our challenging mission. The sound of our drill sergeant’s voice—a 5 A.M. wake-up call—jolted me from a fitful sleep. Monday. Basic training. My feet hit the cold barracks floor, and I looked at my new Marine buddies. Their faces were solemn. Would basic be as tough as we had heard? Yesterday, we men had lined up, and barbers shaved our heads nearly bald. We joked about how the Marines gave us the same haircut we’d had in boarding school. I relaxed a little. So far, I knew this routine. Then my twenty-eight fellow Marines and I were issued uniforms. The dress uniforms were dark blue, had a belted jacket with brass buttons over matching pants, and included a white hat with a visor, a raised band, and a flattened top. Very sharp looking. The working uniforms, the ones we would wear during basic training, were a very light brown jacket and pants of the same fabric and color. Our rifles were Springfield boltaction’03s like the ones used in World War I. We were also issued Ka-bars, fighting knives, about a foot long with a seveninch blade. Those were excellent knives, sharp and strong. The grooved leather handle fit well into our hands, and it had a guard that kept fingers from slipping onto the sharp blade. Later, overseas, I was issued a .38 pistol that I hung on my belt and a .30-caliber Browning sub-machine gun that took ten-round and fifteen-round clips. The recruits who’d finished with basic training at the depot always shook their heads and laughed when they saw us new guys. “You’ll be sorrrrrrry,” they’d say in a singsong voice. I don’t know how they knew we were new recruits. We thought we looked just like them in our Marine-issue fatigues. But they knew just as surely as if GREEN RECRUIT had been stamped across our foreheads. I can still hear that “You’ll be sorrrrrrry.” And they were right. But today it makes me laugh.

At 5:30 A.M. sharp, training began. We ran along the beach, carrying pails of sand and salt water. We ran for a half hour. Not so bad. Next we did a half-hour stint on the obstacle course. Rigorous, but still not any worse than the daily physical trials we’d endured at home. We performed various exercises in half-hour segments throughout the morning. After lunch, the drill sergeant informed us that everyone must learn to swim. That raised a few eyebrows. Growing up in the desert, many of the men were uncomfortable in deep water. I was lucky. As a twelve-year-old, I’d taught myself to swim in a reservoir my family had built for the sheep on Grandmother’s land. Once everyone could swim, or at least stay afloat, we practiced abandoning ship. Jumping into the water from thirty feet up was not easy for any of us. It required real resolve. But we did what we were instructed to do without question. Physical challenges were something all of us men were used to. The early mornings, too, we took in stride. Doing laundry with a scrub brush wasn’t so bad either. The exhaustion that conquered many Marine recruits did not beat us Navajos. Our training days lasted until around seven-thirty at night, with a half-hour break for lunch and a break at the end of the day for dinner. At meals, we were required to eat everything on our plates. A sergeant stood by the trash can to keep us from throwing food away. Many an Anglo Marine stood over that garbage can, finishing his leftovers. Not us Navajos. The food was delicious and plentiful. We ate it all with enthusiasm. After dinner, we had one precious hour to ourselves. Bedtime was at eightthirty. One afternoon, after we’d been in basic training for a few days, an instructor, a corporal, told us Navajo recruits to line up. Then he walked down the line, punching each of us in the gut. “Let’s see if you’re getting tough,” 25 he said. When the corporal reached Carl Gorman, Gorman hit him, knocking him down. He and Carl put on boxing gloves. We Navajo men cheered for Carl, who held his own with the Marine corporal. Soon we learned that the real challenges in the military were cultural, not physical. Marine officers looked us in the eye and expected us to look back. To a Navajo, doing this was very bad manners. The drill instructor confronted us recruits, his face inches from ours, and yelled at the top of his lungs. We had

always been taught to keep our voices modulated. The unaccustomed shouting rattled us, making it difficult to respond. There were times we men, accustomed to reservation life, felt like we’d arrived on a different planet. The constant shouting and hassling took a toll on us. Several men feared they had made a mistake in joining the Marines. Some talked with me about how out of place they felt in this new “white man’s” environment. And many had begun to wonder whether they’d make it out of the war alive. I listened to their fears, knowing that they were voicing the same doubts I felt. But we encouraged each other, together conquering any misgivings. We had not made a mistake. Still, close-order drills proved to be a challenge for all of us. The drill instructor barked out marching commands. The shouted commands were confusing, and when one of us made a wrong move, he bumped into the rest of us, drawing attention. The drill sergeant’s consequent yelling didn’t help to clarify things. But we were determined. When we got a break from training, we practiced close-order drill commands. The purpose of the drills was to get us to react quickly and to work well together, as one seamless entity, not many. Gradually we became comfortable with the routines. The discipline at boot camp reminded me of those harsh days at boarding school. But I understood the reason for the strict Marine training. Soon our lives would be at stake. It wasn’t like school, where the meanness had seemed arbitrary. My buddies and I worked hard at learning everything we were supposed to learn. It paid off. The Marine Corps Chevron, the Marine newspaper in San Diego, carried an article about our platoon, number 382. It was kind of embarrassing, but at least it let us know that we were doing okay. An excerpt: Magnificent specimens of “original American” manhood, they are already farther advanced than recruits usually are . . . Sgt. L. J. Stephenson, who has been handling new Marines as they passed through Recruit Depot for more than a year now, is unstinted in his praise of these men. 26 Platoon 382 won over even the most crusty drill instructors. Every man in the platoon worked hard. The instructors bragged about our rapid progress. I’d always been pretty easygoing, and I began to feel confident about my place— and my buddies’ places—in the Marines. We recruits became good friends with our instructors. The drill sergeants got a huge kick out of commanding us to “count cadence in Navajo” as we marched.

On the parade grounds, the heads of surrounding troops snapped around, everyone curious about what was going on. What was that strange cadence? I especially liked the rifle range. It was like a game, with everyone competing. We men took turns setting up targets and recording the results of each recruit’s practice volleys. “Damn!” The instructor pored over our score sheets. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He shook his head. “Where’d you guys learn to shoot?” We felt pretty comfortable on the rifle range and with our pistols, and Platoon 382 earned one of the highest scores in marksmanship of any Marine platoon in history. We graduated with one expert, fourteen sharpshooters, and twelve marksmen in our ranks. That got us another write-up in the Marine Corps Chevron. I was qualified as a pistol sharpshooter. Eventually, my fellow recruits and I could handle handguns, 30-30 leveraction guns, and hand grenades without fear. The weapons still inspired a sense of awe and danger, but we knew how to use them safely. Hand-to-hand combat practice with bayonets resulted in some bruises, but added to our self-assurance. Grenades were especially heavy and cumbersome. We graduated from dud grenades to live ones, and I felt my throat tighten when I pulled the pin. Just as they’d taught us, I held the trigger in until I was ready to throw. Chest-high trenches protected us from the explosions. I threw from one deep trench into another—my arm muscles as taut as a stretched rubber band. The supervising instructor nodded. “Good.” I scrambled from the trench, and the next recruit took his turn. Survival training was also quite intense. We’d march for miles across the desert, with limited amounts of food and water. Often we spent the night out in the open, staying in improvised shelters. It was like herding sheep all over again. The fieldwork was pretty demanding, but there was classroom work, too. We learned about the various weapons in detail. By the end of training, each of us could disassemble and reassemble his rifle while blindfolded, meeting or beating a specified time limit. We all attended communications school, learning Morse code and semaphore, which utilized flags. We also learned to fix radios and to take them apart. At the time this seemed to be just one more required skill. We were not told what a large part these radios would play in our future in the South Pacific. There were plenty of women in the Marines. They didn’t go into combat back then, but we often saw women in the motor pool, women who trained as nurses, women who handled the food service. Although I never met any of them, they

were a constant reminder of why we men were preparing to fight. When we completed our seven weeks of basic, Platoon 382 stood final inspection. It was June 27, 1942. Colonel James L. Underhill, base commanding officer, addressed the troops. He gave us Navajo men high praise, and was quoted in the Marine Corps Chevron the following week: This platoon is the first truly All-American platoon to pass through this Recruit Depot. It is, in fact, the first All-American platoon to enter the United States Marine Corps. We have had individual members of the Indian nations in the Corps, but never before a group like this one . . . Yours has been one of the outstanding platoons in the history of this Recruit Depot and a letter has gone to Washington telling of your excellence. You obey orders like seasoned and disciplined soldiers. You have maintained rugged health. You have been anxiouus [sic] to learn your new duties, and you have learned quickly. As a group you have made one of the highest scores on the Rifle Range. The Marine Corps is proud to have you in its ranks, and I am proud to have been the Commanding Officer of the Base while you were here. You are now to be transferred to a combat organization where you will receive further training. When the time comes that you go to battle with the enemy, I know that you will fight like true Navajos, Americans and Marines. 27 The article also carried pictures of Platoon 382. And one headline tried to give all of us swelled heads: FAMED PLATOON OF NAVAJO INDIANS FINISH RECRUIT TRAINING. The intense training had built up our confidence. By the end of basic training, I felt satisfied that I had learned everything I needed to know to stay alive in combat.

CHAPTER TEN Unbreakable Code July to September 1942 Platoon 382, all twenty-nine of us, eagerly anticipated a ten-day leave. After they completed basic training, our white Marine buddies took off to see their families. But an officer pulled us Navajos aside, explaining that our mission was very critical. The men of Platoon 382 could not be spared for ten days. While those other Marine recruits sat around dining tables with sisters, brothers, and parents, I sat in the barracks trying to compose a letter. I pictured Grandmother, Father, and Grandfather at home on the Checkerboard, enjoying the sunny, warm days of summer. My family thought I was still living at the school in Tuba City. I wasn’t sure how to tell them that I had joined the Marines or that I was going to war. Finally I just wrote the facts flat out and sealed the envelope. It was our second day at Camp Elliott, near San Diego, our home for the next thirteen weeks. Riding out there on the bus, we had speculated about our “critical mission.” A Marine officer strode with a no-nonsense gait to a classroom building, and we followed. He opened the locked door and marched to the front of the room as we piled in behind him. Standing tall, his uniform spotless, his expression unsmiling, he waited for us to sit. Then he spoke. I felt a small knot tighten in my stomach. The officer wasted no time. He looked around the room at each of us, the twenty-nine carefully selected Marine recruits, and told us we were to use our native language to devise an unbreakable code. I read expressions of shock on every face. A code based on the Navajo language? After we’d been so severely punished in boarding school for speaking it? For starters, you’ll need a word for each letter of the alphabet, the officer told us. The officer locked the door as he left, telling us we’d be released at the end of

the day to get dinner. Someone would bring lunch to the room. Other than that, we were on our own, forbidden to speak to anyone outside that room about our task. And if we needed to go anywhere, we had to go in pairs. We were to practice the buddy system at all times. Anyone caught alone would be punished. Hearing that door lock click closed, I again felt my stomach tense. The windows of our classroom were protected by security bars. Now what? After some discussion, we began to see the wisdom in our assignment. Navajo was a very complex language. And, since it was not written, 28 the Japanese could learn it only from a Navajo or from one of the rare non-Navajos who had lived on the reservation and learned to speak the language. To be honest, I don’t think they could have learned the language even then. It was just too complicated. Still, apprehension set in. How could we, twenty-eight of whom had never worked with the military, develop a code robust enough to be used in battle? One that could be responsible for sending life-or-death mes-sages? The task loomed ahead like a black unmapped cavern. Where to begin? We stared at the locked door of the room in which we sat. One of our men, Gene Crawford, had been in the reserves. He had worked with codes before, and he offered to share his knowledge with all of us. There were certain things that were important. The code words chosen must be clear when spoken on the radio. Each word must be distinct from other words chosen, in order to avoid confusion. The officer who’d locked the room was correct: a good way to begin was to select a word to represent each letter of the alphabet. Gene Crawford and two other men from among the twenty-nine, John Benally and John Manuelito, played a strong part in setting the direction for our group as we developed the new code. On that first day, we decided to use an English word—generally an animal, a plant, or an object that was part of our everyday world—to represent each letter of the English alphabet. Those words would then be translated into Navajo, and the Navajo word would represent the English letter. As Gene had suggested, we chose Navajo words that could be easily distinguished on the radio, words differing clearly in sound from other selected words. A became “red ant,” not the English word for ant, but the Navajo word, pronounced wol-la-chee. B became “bear,” pronounced shush in Navajo. C was “cat” or moasi. D was “deer” or be. Thus a double encryption was used. Each letter became an English word beginning with that letter, and the English word was translated into a Navajo word.

We tried to make the letter equivalents easy to remember. And we discussed pronunciation—since emphasis on the wrong syllable, a slight change in tone, or a glottal stop could totally change a word’s meaning in the complicated Navajo language. Any differences in dialects between us men had to be resolved into one firm code. In the heat of battle we could afford no ambiguities. Although Navajo is spoken less and less frequently today, the boarding schools in the 1920s and ’30s had—happily—failed in their efforts to erase the language from the minds of their students. We men in that locked room were articulate in both Navajo and English. Navajo bears little resemblance to English. When a Navajo asks whether you speak his language, he uses these words: “Do you hear Navajo?” Words must be heard before they can be spoken. Many of the sounds in Navajo are impossible for the unpracticed ear to distinguish. The inability of most people to hear Navajo was a solid plus when it came to devising our code. The Navajo language is very exact, with fine shades of meaning that are missing in English. Our language illustrates the Diné’s relationship to nature. Everything that happens in our lives happens in relationship to the world that surrounds us. The language reflects the importance of how we and various objects interact. For example, the form of the verb “to dump something” that is used depends upon the object that is being dumped and the container that is being utilized. If one dumps coal from a bucket, for instance, the verb is different from the verb used to describe dumping water from a pail. And the verb again differs when one dumps something from a sack. Again, in Navajo you do not simply “pick up” an object. Depending on what the object is—its consistency and its shape—the verb used for “to pick up” will differ. Thus the verb for picking up a handful of squishy mud differs from the verb used for picking up a stick. Pronunciation, too, is complex. Navajo is a tonal language with four tones: high, low, rising, and falling. The tone used can completely change the meaning of a word. The words for “medicine” and “mouth” are pronounced in the same way, but they are differentiated by tone. 29 Glottal and aspirated stops are also employed. Given these complexities, native speakers of any other language are generally unable to properly pronounce most Navajo words.

But the complexities of the Navajo language provide a wonderful tool for spinning tales. Our speech does not simply state facts; it paints pictures. Spoken in Navajo, the phrase “I am hungry” becomes “Hunger is hurting me.” 30 The conjugation of verbs in Navajo is also complex. There is a verb form for one person performing an action, a different form of the verb for two people, and a third form for more than two people. English can be spoken sloppily and still be understood. Not so with the Navajo language. So, even though our assigned task—developing a code—made us nervous, we realized that we brought the right skills to the job. Several white Marines who’d grown up on the Navajo Reservation and knew quite a bit of Navajo later applied to code talker school. But there were always words or syllables they could not pronounce correctly, so they didn’t make it as code talkers. There was no dissension among us in that locked room. We focused. We worked as one. This was a talent long employed in Navajo culture—many working together to herd the sheep, plant the corn, bring in a harvest. When we were children, distant relatives visited for weeks at a time, strengthening the bond of family. Neighbors cared for one another’s livestock when someone was sick or had to travel, knowing their friend would someday do the same for them. The ability to live in unity, learned on the reservation and the Checkerboard, proved invaluable to our current assignment. Day one ended, and the fledgling new code had already begun to take shape. We twenty-nine Marines had come up with a workable structure. When I looked around, relief showed on every face. We slapped each other on the back, and joked to let off steam, feeling good about our work. The impossible-seeming task suddenly looked possible. We would not let our country or our fellow Marines down. An officer arrived to unlock the room. He collected the working papers we’d generated that day and locked them in a safe. Hearing that safe slam shut, I was again impressed by the seriousness of our mission. It was Saturday, three-thirty in the afternoon, after a long week of code work. Roy Begay sat on his bunk in the barracks, his blanket pulled tight like a drum,

military style. He grinned at me as I sprawled on the adjacent bunk. “Spell ‘beer,’” Roy said. I chuckled, “Shush dzeh dzeh gah.” “Good,” said Roy. A smile lit up his face. “Let’s find the other guys and get some shush dzeh dzeh gah. Now.” I swung my legs over the side of the cot. “Ouu,” I said. I liked how things were “wide open.” The other code talkers and I were generally released from our work in late afternoon, around four or five o’clock. And on weekends we were free. Not tied to duties like sheepherding, we spent our leisure time exploring San Diego. I was happy about being in the Marines, being in San Diego, and having a secret mission. I felt as though I’d stepped up out of my old life into a new, exciting world. Everyone in San Diego asked us questions. About being Indian. About being Marines. After a few beers, it was easy to converse with people who were so different from us, and visiting bars became a popular pastime. Many of my Navajo Marine buddies had never tried beer, or any alcohol, before. I had, and I didn’t much like the taste, but did like the way it warmed my insides, relaxing me. We often wound up at a favorite watering hole, a sort of enlisted men’s club on base we called “The Slop Chute.” There they served food in addition to alcohol, so we could have a meal and a drink or two without getting sloppy. When we left base and ventured into San Diego, we arrived at bars wearing our Marine uniforms and were served with no questions asked. But many Navajos worked in San Diego’s factories. When Native Americans arrived out of uniform, they were told that Indians would not be served alcohol. The popular idea was that a drunk Indian was a bad Indian. That was just the way it was. We all accepted it. Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border from San Diego, was another popular destination. One bar at the border had a white line drawn on the floor. On one side of the line was the USA, on the other Mexico. Mexico was wilder, and behavior there was less restrained than in the United States. Military men returning from Mexico were assumed to have gotten into trouble. Often medical checkups, performed by the military, were required at the border. Military Police watched over us Marines in San Diego as we drank, and anyone who appeared inebriated was sent to the barracks. On weekends, my group had to be back at barracks by early evening, around seven-thirty. We took

our new job seriously and always returned on time. We never got so drunk that we had to be brought to the base by other Marines. Even though we were watched by our fellow military men, the sense of freedom, of having days off, was like a rebirth for me. On the Checkerboard there was always work to be done, never a day off. Now we were unencumbered by the duties and obligations to family that had filled our hours at home. In San Diego, we discovered thousands of lights, noisy crowds of people, endless blocks of buildings, thousands of vehicles, and the ocean. Most of the men had never seen the ocean before. Normally an event as big as seeing the ocean for the first time required a blessing. An even more serious blessing was needed before swimming in the ocean. The blessings helped us to maintain a balance with nature. But things in the military were different, and we just came upon the ocean all of a sudden during basic training. We all practiced jumping into the water and running on the beach. Landing in the South Pacific, in combat, would mean swimming and wading through the water. We had to be ready. Every night we quizzed each other on the code. As part of our task, we devised phonetic English spellings for the previously unwritten Navajo words. This was all top secret, as was the rest of the code. The new phonetic spellings allowed us to review and study the Navajo words that became part of the new code, words that needed to flow like water in the midst of battle. It was impossible to study too much. We practiced writing. We decided that everything should be printed, no script. Each word had to be legible, and most of us wrote in upper case, each man’s letters the same as all the others. I still print today, out of long-ingrained habit. It took about five days for us to devise Navajo word equivalents for the full alphabet. The code pleased all of us with its unique words and the ease with which it could be memorized. The most difficult letters were J and Z. We finally settled on “jackass,” code word tkele-cho-gi, and “zinc,” code word besh-do-tliz. We quizzed each other, spelling messages until we knew the Navajoword equivalents for the English alphabet without a flaw. If someone had trouble with the memorizing, we all quizzed him until he got it. We knew that the strength of the group made us all sharp. And in combat, the code would only be as strong as both men using it—the one on the sending end and the one on the receiving end. Despite the efforts of boarding schools to repress it, Navajo oral tradition remained strong. Stories were still told around the campfires at home, memorized, and told again . . . and again. Memorization, for each of us, was

second nature. And, again despite the efforts of boarding schools, from the time of their birth, Navajo children in a traditional environment were exposed to the exacting and complex thought processes required by the Navajo language. This helped contribute to their ability to deal with decisions and complexities in their lives. Certainly it contributed to the abilities required to be a code talker: learning quickly, memorizing, and working under extreme pressure. I am thankful that my father and grandparents taught me my Navajo language well. We knew that the Navajo code words would be spoken, but never written, when utilized in battle. English messages were to be encrypted orally into Navajo and sent by radio. When a message was received, it would be orally decrypted from Navajo back into written English. In the heat of battle, not one of us could afford to be rattled. We studied till we were exhausted, then studied some more. Certain military terms would be used frequently—so frequently that we didn’t want to waste time spelling them. Those words needed direct translations. We men, barely off the reservation, were not familiar with military terms, the names and capabilities of various ships and planes, types of artillery, and other equipment. Words like “echelon” or “battalion” stymied us. We also had to figure out a way to indicate various officers—“captain,” “major,” “brigadier general,” “colonel,” “first lieutenant,” “second lieutenant,” “major general.” How were we supposed to find equivalents for all of those? We asked for three Navajo-speaking military men to help us. Felix Yazzie, Ross Haskie, and Wilson Price were pulled from their Marine duties and assigned to help us with the code. These three men fit in, becoming one with the rest of us, indistinguishable in my mind from the original twenty-nine. After we developed the code together, they went into battle with us. I don’t know why historians insist on separating them from the original twenty-nine. For me, it was the original thirty-two. They deserved credit for the code just as much as any of us did. Of course, even after we compiled a comprehensive list of military terms, there was still a problem. In Navajo, no equivalent for words like “fighter plane” existed. We chose animals and other items from our everyday world that resembled the military equipment. So “fighter plane” was represented by the quick and maneuverable hummingbird, code word da-he-tih-hi. The huge transport planes were represented as an eagle who carried prey, atsah. A battleship was a whale, code word lo-tso, and a destroyer was a shark, code word ca-lo. A cruiser was a small whale, code word lo-tso-yazzie. In choosing each

code word, we talked about how the animal chosen lived and hunted, and we did our best to link it up logically with a piece of military equipment. Sometimes we used non-animal items to represent certain things. A hand grenade was a potato, or nimasi. Bombs were eggs or a-ye-shi. Japan was slant-eye or beh-na-alitsosie. There is no Navajo equivalent for months of the year, since we did not divide our calendar into twelve chunks. Instead, we used concepts to describe each month. January, a cold month, was “crusted snow” or yas-nil-tes. The month of April, when spring sprouts begin to grow, was “small plant” or tah-chill. June, when much planting is done, became “big planting” or be-ne-eh-eh-jah-tso. In addition to the alphabet, we devised nearly 220 terms for various concepts and diverse types of military equipment. A code name, Ne-he-mah, was chosen to represent the United States of America. Ne-he-mah translates to “our mother.” Living the Right Way, we men knew that things must be in harmony. We didn’t compete with each other. We continued to help any of our buddies who needed help. As traditional Navajos, we had a bond of understanding. In our new roles as Marines, we continued to work together. We thirty-two were an interesting blend of personalities. Eugene Crawford was husky and real smart. He had a good sense of humor. Wilsie Bitsie was short and chubby. He, too, made us laugh. Felix Yazzie, one of the three men assigned to help us original twenty-nine develop military code terms, was tall and lean, another joker. Charlie Begay, a tall, skinny man kept us laughing, too. He was good to be around. Those four joined Carlson’s Raiders at some point. I think we were on Guadalcanal when that happened. Their officer, Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson, was a strong leader. He appreciated the code talkers and was good to us. And the raiders were real brave. They’d go behind enemy lines under cover of dark—or even sometimes during the day—to raid Japanese camps or airfields and to clean up hot spots. Dangerous work. Then there was Samuel Begay, who had a good sense of humor like Charlie Begay. Cosey Brown was quiet, another tall, thin man. John Chee, again tall and skinny, was intelligent. He knew a lot about all kinds of subjects. David Curley was well educated. He often talked about school. Ross Haskie, another of the three men assigned to help the first twenty-nine, was a big guy who looked kind of like a white man. Alfred Leonard was just the opposite—short and skinny and, like so many of the others, very funny. William McCabe was another welleducated member of the team. Lloyd Oliver was very serious, tuned in. I liked to hang out with him. No matter where we were, he always knew what was going

on. John Benally was a little guy, very sharp, with a complexion so light he looked like a white man, not a Navajo. He learned the code perfectly, later staying on at Camp Elliott as an instructor who trained the new code talkers. Oscar Ilthma was one of the older guys, also light-complexioned like a white man. John Brown was a very good guy, smart, with a dry sense of humor, kind of like Jack Benny. Wilson Price, the third of the men who came into the classroom at Camp Elliott to help with military terms, was quiet and very serious. Lowell Damon was a real nice guy, my best buddy. He was fairly tall and skinny, serious about our assignment. I always wished he could have accompanied Roy Begay and me when we went overseas together. George Dennison was funny, kind of tall also. James Dixon was funny, too, one of the older guys. Jack Nez was also a good buddy, not related to me, although his name was Nez, like mine. Frank Pete was a small guy, and quiet. Balmer Slowtalker, who changed his name to Joe Palmer after the war, was a joker, with a fun sense of humor. Nelson Thompson kept to himself. Harry Tsosie was tall and quiet, and he didn’t socialize much. John Willie, a small guy, was quiet, too. Johnny Manuelito kept to himself. He also ended up being a code instructor. Benjamin Cleveland was funny and short. Carl Gorman, at thirty-five, was the oldest of the original code talkers. He liked to talk and to joke. He was a very good guy. William Yazzie, who later changed his name to William Dean Wilson, was about my size, quiet and gentle. Allen Dale June was a good guy, about my height, and husky. Then there were Roy and me. We were both serious guys, and we paid close attention to our assignments. Roy was close to six feet tall, and I was much shorter, five feet six inches. We both had wiry builds, and we depended on each other. Although neither of us made many jokes, we laughed a lot with the other guys. They were all good men, and it makes me feel nostalgic, thinking about those guys, my buddies. We Navajos have long been known for our sense of humor, and looking back, I am struck by how many of the men were born entertainers. It was good for morale. We finished the development phase. We felt sure we had a code that even a native Navajo speaker would not be able to crack. Our classroom was unlocked, and we code talkers went out on maneuvers to test the code and to practice, practice, practice. When we saw the letter C we had to think moasi. In battle, there would be no time to think: C, cat. That’s moasi. It had to be automatic, without a conscious thought process. We were to be living code machines. Several Marine generals came to the room to listen as the code was refined.

As part of the training, those men arranged to put some of us on shipboard— both submarines and surface ships—and some on land. We often spread out like this for field maneuvers aimed at practicing the code. Someone not involved with our group heard the messages, and all along the California coast troops suddenly went to “condition black” (a state of readiness where weapons were prepared for immediate use) thinking that the Japanese had invaded the United States mainland at San Diego. A couple of the code talkers were taken to North Island Headquarters, where they quelled the panic. They listened to the tapes of “Japanese” made by the officers and identified the language as Navajo. One of the colonels involved with the program told his superiors that the strange language was their own Navajo Marines speaking a code that they had developed. He promised to give headquarters advance warning of future field maneuvers involving the code so that the Navajo words wouldn’t be mistaken for Japanese and wouldn’t cause panic. The new code was leagues more efficient than the “Shackle” code used previously by combatants. Once they stopped being troubled by the foreignsounding words, the generals were impressed. Still, some had doubts. Over and over we demonstrated the speed and accuracy of our code for various high-ranking officers. Some observers even thought the code was so accurate—word for word and punctuation mark for punctuation mark—that we must be cheating somehow. That bothered us. What point would there be in cheating? That wouldn’t cut it in battle. We wanted our code to work as much as anyone else did. Maybe more. But we didn’t let on how much that accusation insulted us. To see whether we were scamming, some officers separated the men transmitting from those receiving so we couldn’t see each other, then posted guards by each so we couldn’t cheat in any way. Our messages were still fast and accurate. Eventually the observers had no choice but to admit that our code worked. As a further test, expert code breakers from the United States military were assigned the task of breaking our code. They tried for weeks, but not one man met with any success in breaking the Navajo code. Finally, the Marine brass threw their considerable weight behind the code. We had earned staunch allies.

Later, new code talker recruits expanded this code, adding two more Navajo words to represent most letters and more than four hundred additional words for other military terms, bringing the code to around seven hundred words. When a code talker transmitted the letter A, he could then use the Navajo word for “ant” or “apple” or “axe.” The code talkers might spell a word containing three As using each of the three words for A. This broke the pattern of one-letter-oneword, a pattern in which a code cracker might discover the symbol for E, the most common letter in English, and other letters based upon how frequently they were used. The extra letter symbols made the code even more complex and more impossible to crack, and the added words for military maneuvers and equipment made transmission even faster. In late September 1942, our thirteen weeks in Camp Elliott came to an end. We graduated as Navajo code talkers, Marine Corps MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) number 642 and were promoted to private first class. We hoped to get some leave, but again our officers talked to us. They explained that we were badly needed in the South Pacific theater of the war, where the Japanese had already taken Guam, the Philippines, and Burma on the Malay Peninsula. They had attacked New Guinea and prevailed in the Battle of the Java Sea. The Bataan Death March in the Philippines, in which more than five thousand Americans perished, had been well publicized back in April, around the time we had been recruited. The U.S. victories at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Hawaiian island of Midway were also known to us. Midway had been the first major Japanese Naval defeat in 350 years. And, of course, we were familiar with the valiant ongoing struggle by the United States to take Guadalcanal. So, again, we were not allowed to visit our families. We immediately prepared to board ships bound for the French islands of New Caledonia. It was autumn, before the middle of October. Our Japanese enemies, we were informed, had always managed to crack American communications codes. Past experience gave them a well-earned confidence that they could decipher any code devised by the United States. But they were unaware that a new era of wartime communications had begun.

CHAPTER ELEVEN New Caledonia October to early November 1942 The ocean swelled and subsided, wave after wave, motion without end. I half stood, half leaned against the ship rail. One of my buddies leaned beside me. Our hands and faces clammy, neither of us spoke. That morning, most of the men had thrown up the antiseasick pills that were routinely handed out on board ship. Another code talker joined us and groaned. “Are we there yet?” En route to the French islands of New Caledonia, a group of islands off the east coast of Australia in the South Pacific, we traveled light. Our dress blues stayed back in San Diego, as did anything else we wouldn’t need in battle. Some of the guys sent stuff home, but I just loaded a sea-bag and left it at the base in San Diego. I never got any of its contents back, except for my dress blues. Our ship, the luxury ocean liner USS Lurline, had been converted for military use. The vessel, once ringing with the clink of crystal glasses, faint memories of haunting melodies drifting just beyond earshot, was now a military transport vessel. I could almost see the former passengers— moneyed men, like movie stars, resplendent in tuxedos, bejeweled women hanging on their arms. But now, in the fall of 1942, one big barracks area replaced the private rooms, and the separate dining areas had become a single mess hall. So we troops slept and ate together. The elegant vessel, armed with hastily mounted artillery on deck, moved toward a destination that had never graced its peacetime itinerary: the Pacific islands of World War II. When our transport ship docked in Hawaii the next day, only officers were granted shore leave. There were ten of us code talkers on board, and most were too sick to care about carousing onshore. We went below, where hammocklike beds were strung from a metal framework, four high, with racks for our rifles bolted onto the wall next to them. We climbed into our beds in the stuffy, hot hold of the ship. My bunk was on the third tier, and when the man above me